Here’s an uncomfortable truth for my fellow planners:
You can’t know the specific tasks a project requires until you are in it.
The planning protocol I use weekly requires me to set outcomes and break down the tasks that will take me there.
Recently I set about creating an outcome but was at a complete loss to know where to start- how can I list what I don’t know? How can I allot time for tasks I haven’t named?
I blocked out a sizable chunk of time to tackle the outcome to see what emerged. It wasn’t until a good 40 minutes into that time chunk that I had a lay of the land and could start to see the sequence of tasks required of me.
The old me would have dived into that outcome during the week planning phase in a desperate attempt to understand and quantify the tasks- but I’m glad I didn’t.
Alternatively, had I attempted to name tasks before I really knew, I’d have risked wasting time and working on the wrong thing.
It was enough to guess an amount of time and jump in head first when the time came.
It’s more than okay for thing to remain unknown for a bit. Or a while.
